Monday, February 18, 2013

A little over ten years ago, a blog was born. Two days later, on February 18 2003, I made my first post, having been lured aboard by my then-co-blogger Mike (who then wandered off and left me in charge, which may have been his cunning plan from the beginning).

I've now been at this for ten years. In that time, No Right Turn has had 13127 posts, and now gets ~390,000 visitors a year. And while posting volumes have declined as I've moved onto Twitter, I'm still cranking out around 200,000 words a year on this thing. I've done some cool stuff: getting sedition repealed, reporting on Member's Bills and driving more openness about them, holding Ministers to account using the OIA. Hopefully I'll keep finding cool stuff to do in future.

Why do I do it? Apart from the driving urge to write, its because politics is a participation sport. Laws get made by those who turn up, and if you don't, you get walked all over by those who do. This is my way of getting my views out there, of pushing for change, of trying to affect our national conversation. Sometimes successfully, sometimes not - but if I stop doing it, then those views get ignored, because no-one is going to stick up for them but me.